National Parks Traveler

Salmon fisheries seem to be quickly rebuilding along the Elwha River drainage below Olympic National Park in the wake of efforts to restore the river, as thousands of Chinook salmon have been counted in the river and its tributaries.

Despite long odds, searchers continued looking Wednesday for an elderly woman missing in Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho. The body of her companion was found last week, four days after they were reported missing.

There are the obvious impacts tied to the closure of the National Park System due to the partial government shutdown: guests forced to leave the parks, gateway communities losing business, concessions operations in flux.

Can you get your head around a national park more than three times the size of 2.2-million-acre Yellowstone National Park? That's the new size of Serrania de Chiribiquete National Park in Columbia.

The arrogance of Congress is withering and shameful.

A refillable water bottle can save you a lot of money over the course of a year as compared to the cost of buying multiple throw-away plastic bottles, and there are plenty of choices in the marketplace. If you'd like a bottle that's durable, easy to clean, easy to open with one hand and able to keep your water cold for hours, the Thermos Hydration Bottle is a great choice.

Once-in-a-lifetime trips to majestic places such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone crumbled Tuesday as Congress's failure to avert a shutdown of the federal government interrupted countless vacation plans as closure gates came down across the National Park System.

For the most part, a visit to Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska, is going to be either for the sport fishing or the bear photography. Usually, not much is mentioned regarding landscape photography within the park. That being said, there *are* all sorts of landscape photo ops waiting to be captured within that amazing place.

Over the years the National Park Service has developed quite an array of maps for use in park publications and exhibits, and you can access them on a link tucked away on the NPS website. If you're planning a park visit or just enjoy looking at maps, you'll find plenty of material at a link called "Find A National Park Service Map."

It's no doubt a coincidence, but just days after the National Trust for Historic Preservation suggested the National Park Service lease out some of its historic structures as a way to preserve them, Valley Forge National Historical Park officials are trying to do just that.